


So Much For Today/I Didn't Need That HP Anyway

by The_Exile



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst and Tragedy, Bittersweet Ending, Endgame, Fourth Wall, Gen, Rainbows, Spoilers, surrender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 13:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11381085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: The lights in the sky remind Asgore of the souls offered up to win their freedom.





	So Much For Today/I Didn't Need That HP Anyway

**Author's Note:**

> written for picture #8

Heavy raindrops splashed onto Asgore's nose. The Mountain King's nose twitched and he reflexively shook the moisture from his lush golden and white fur, spraying the monster standing closest to him with water. He sneezed and rubbed his nose with one large clawed finger. In the warmth of the summer afternoon, his fur was already starting to dry out even though the gentle shower continued. The sensation was one he hadn't experienced for literally decades but the same instincts told him to breathe the scent of the wet grass through his hircine nostrils, to enjoy the refreshing spray and the light breeze and the way that the sun soaked into his battle-weary bones and filled him with a vitality unmatched by anything he could conjure through magic.

In the middle of the blue sky, undisturbed by anything more than a few soft clouds as the long grass of the rolling hills was not ruffled by wind, Asgore saw a sight he didn't remember Alphys ever telling him about before. Even a genius like her probably forgot details like this, things that seemed like miracles to a people exiled underground.

Its broad stripes of coloured light reminded him of the Souls and their distinctive auras: purple, blue, a different shade of blue, green, yellow, orange and then red. That red, lighting the sky on fire, drew his attention the most. Red was for Determination, he knew. In the language of souls, it meant your spirit would endure, that even when you knew you were dead, you would still come back, waking up in the last place you remembered vividly, that felt special to you. The other colours of soul were powerful too - you didn't just use any souls for a ritual to remove a barrier curse from an entire species - but Red was the only one that could survive death.

But it had not.

Upon a quick investigation, as he yelled for his messengers to send the word across the entire mountain that they were finally free, he discovered that, yes, someone (there were tiny trails of dog drool around the rim) had moved the final soul cannister, unnoticed in the heat of battle, so that it rested, open, literally on top of the nearest Determination leyline node (a 'save point', sans called them), so that it was essentially a trap for returning souls. Asgore assumed he had won by the favour of a fickle God, until he had a quick poke around the records in the visitor's book he kept next to the 'save point' and discovered that the fallen human had not even been saving in the closest one.

Besides, Asgore was an experienced warrior and he knew what the look in the child's eyes had meant as the two of them stared each other down once again, the Mountain King summoning a pair of vorpal scythes over one shoulder and a swarm of fireballs over the other as he prepared to lunge with his trident. There had been something in the child's voice - or the voice behind theirs, the other voice that blended seamlessly into theirs and that only Sans believed him when he said was there, and the voice behind them wasn't hiding itself any more so that they were almost synchronous - as they spoke to each other, as they usually did when the child re-entered the room. He apologised and told them that they reminded him of his own child, they returned the apology, saying that they never meant to stand between their new monster friends and their happiness. He told them that he wished there had been any other way, they shook their head and said that it 'kind of felt like it was destined to happen'.

As all the Souls had claimed, all those years ago, when they were hurled down the shaft in the Mountain as ritual sacrifices to appease his wrath. They, too, had been calmly accepting of the fate that they had embraced as their own.

The serenity in the child's eyes, even more quietly stoic than usual, had been that of a warrior about to surrender. Not out of fear or despair or exhaustion, but out of lack of reason to fight.

Can't be Determined to do something you don't want to do and don't feel you have to do, mused Asgore, and it must be a long and difficult life when every time you feel you've finished something, you just live through it and something else takes its place and nags at you just as much to finish it. Or you find you've run out of any goals at all. The child didn't look old enough to be an embittered immortal yet but who knew if someone with that amount of Determination aged normally.

At the time, Asgore hadn't been given enough time to think about it, because something else attacked him as soon as he realised that the body on the other end of his trident wasn't fading out. Behind you, a voice had whispered in his head. The scythes had whirled around, now blazing silver with unimaginable arcane force, his own essence having reached the critical mass of all seven varieties of soul in one confined space. The writhing thorny tendrils reaching for the nearest soul cannister burned away at the scythe's touch, the main plant, some sort of enormous vile yellow flower, screeching in unholy madness as it sent the rest of its vines out to desperately lash out of him. He strode forward, whirling the scythes around and wreathing himself in white flames. Every swing lopped off another tendril, their attacks shying away from his magnificent aura. With a bleating bellow, he swung the scythes overhead and cleaved the plant's head in two...

And his son lay there, covered in blood.

The King fell to his knees and scooped Asriel up in his arms, muttering hollow words of denial, pleading with the Universe, offering to give back everything he had taken from it. The only response was a weak apology, over and over again, from the young monster, who seemed to think the whole thing was his doing. It was the Red Soul all over again. All over again...

Before Asriel faded to dust, the boy had looked straight into his father's eyes, into the lights glinting in the void of those now entirely dark pupils.

"At least one of us escaped this, brother, eh?" he had rasped, smiling despite the pain he was evidently in. Then, quite suddenly, his face creased into one of horror, "No... no, you can't... it wasn't like that... please don't..."

That was when Asgore saw red. Not metaphorical red from anger but literally a blinding crimson as he turned from an angry, grieving father into something so unstoppably, mechanically bloodthirsty as to put Mettaton to shame. It had no name, its name had been taken by the voice behind the child, and it had been his son's best friend but now it was just another voice in his head to join the chorus that had warned him of the attack and that were now pleading with their vermilion counterpart to stop but to no avail, and the King didn't care what voice he heard any more, only that all his children were gone, every single one, and that it was all the fault of the humans - and nothing stood between his scythes and the collection of their heads any more.

It had been Sans who wrestled him to the ground, apparently snarling and frothing and biting as he raved about the new plan to slaughter every human in existence as revenge for his children. Only Sans would have been powerful enough to stop him at this new tier of existence, and then only because the Souls were fighting amongst themselves and even as the raging beast he had become, he would not stoop so low as to control them like puppets after he had promised them repose during their most sacred contract.

Still, he was afraid of how powerful that seemingly foolish skeleton could become at a moment's notice, and how it wasn't Asgore he had spoken to as he struggled to calm the enraged King down.

Asgore had woken up in the middle of the field, propped up against a rock, surrounded by excitedly chattering monsters. Sans still kept a close eye on him but allowed him to freely stand up. Even his dearest Toriel was out, although she refused to look him in the eye, instead chatting animatedly to Papyrus. Sans wandered off to join his brother. Mettaton and Napstablook had invented a song about the lights in the sky - Alphys explained to them that it was called a rainbow. Muffet wandered up to her King and started talking at him about economics and spiders until he relented.

As the rainbow faded from the peaceful sky, Asgore saluted it, muttering a gruff word of thanks, before walking into a new era.


End file.
